If you baked organic Facebook traffic into your 2018 Marketing plan, you might need to revisit that strategy. Facebook has made a statement announcing a re-prioritization of content produced by friends and family and business content that sparks user engagement. Business content with low engagement will be deprioritized and may no longer show up in the News Feed.

Facebook states: “With this update, we will also prioritize posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people. To do this, we will predict which posts you might want to interact with your friends about, and show these posts higher in feed. These are posts that inspire back-and-forth discussion in the comments and posts that you might want to share and react to – whether that’s a post from a friend seeking advice, a friend asking for recommendations for a trip, or a news article or video prompting lots of discussion.”

Why is this happening?

In an attempt to “fix Facebook.” Over the last year, there has been a decline in user engagement, and overall people have been spending less time on Facebook.

Several recent studies have also shown a negative correlation between Facebook and life satisfaction. Specifically, passive scrolling through branded content and news, versus active engagement with your personal network. Through this algorithm change, Facebook is looking to make the experience more personal again by valuing content that engages users by sparking conversation and interaction.

What does this mean for marketers?

1. Change Your Content Game

If organic (non-paid) views play a large part of your Facebook strategy, you may see a decrease in reach and referral traffic. Page posts will still show up in the News Feed, however, Pages will be rewarded if people actively interact with the content with a reaction, comment or share. Another key factor in the algorithm is the likelihood for a post to promote organic conversations amongst users. This will require marketers to consider the conversation, not just the content, and how your posts can drive genuine engagement.

As a result, marketers will need to be smarter about their overall Facebook campaign strategy. This change will mean increasing your knowledge of your ideal customer profile and taking the time to learn what they want to hear, rather than pushing out what you want them to know. The key is to provide valuable and share-worthy content, rather than self-promotional posts. Facebook also recommends trying more live videos because they drive up to six times more engagement than other types of posts, and fit with the algorithm’s goal of active engagement versus passive watching.

2. Maximize Your Marketing Budget

It’s more important than ever to be strategic with your advertising dollars, especially if you want to stay relevant and maintain your Facebook traffic.

While the News Feed algorithm is not impacting Facebook advertising yet, one can infer from the misleading and “click bait” heavy ads Facebook was scrutinized for, an attempt will be made to weed out these bad campaigns. With a lesser amount of competition, engaging campaigns have the opportunity to stand out.

When it comes to new ad features, Facebook tends to favor their newest offerings when advertising on the platform. Facebook recently released dynamic creative ads, which allows advertiser to enter up to 30 different advertising features (images, videos, texts, CTAs and targeted audiences) per ad group. These features are used to create different ad combinations, testing to find the right ad for the right audience. This new feature is a cost efficient way to reach your targeted audiences at scale, and drive the maximum ROI for your Facebook ads.

If algorithm changes seem daunting, don’t worry. G5 was recently named a Facebook Managed Partner. That means we can help your business stays updated on Facebook’s future changes, best practices, and new feature releases. Working with a designated Facebook Partner will ensure you stand out above the competition, make the most of your marketing budget, and give you more time to focus on your business. For more information about our digital advertising solutions, you can learn more here.